Small Business Startups: 8 Steps to Growing Your Own Business

1. Introduction: When I had first decided to venture out as an entrepreneur, I wish that I had someone to tell me the tricks and hurdles that I would face. Trying to figure it all out on your own is difficult and even crazy, but you don't have to do it alone. My goal is to help entrepreneurs and small business owners improve their business one step at a time. Are you an entrepreneur looking to start up your own business from scratch? Are you having trouble figuring out what to do or how to do it? Or perhaps you've already started your business, but you're running into hurdles and not sure what to do next. Whichever category you find yourself in, whether just starting out or needing extra help navigating the way this course may help you achieve your goals for financial success in this course will learn the eight crucial steps for starting up your own business. You'll gain an understanding of how to choose the type of business you want, how to find what the market needs, how to think in a new way that will allow you to recognize problems and overcome them more easily. How to design your message market and offer how to get information on your message market and offer how to actually reach your market Using multiple strategies. How to evolve your messaging over time, how to get around inevitable hurdles for your business and the legalities and starting up your own business. The material will go over in. This course is the same material that business coaches provide their clients for thousands of dollars, but you're going to learn it for much, much less. I specialize in working with small business owners to improve their financial position through tax strategies and profit analysis. I also work with new and existing entrepreneurs to help build up their businesses for success. I have a business degree in accounting, and I've worked seven years in banking five years as a bake auditor. At the end of this course, you will have learned tools and strategies to help start and improve your business and may begin seen an increase in your own personal financial freedom. So let's get started 2. STEP 1: The Entrepreneur's Mirror: looking into the entrepreneurs mirror will help you reflect on what services or products you might sell. But not only that. It will help you to narrow your market to a specific group of people called a niche market . Why is it important to narrow your business toward a niche market? There's a famous saying within the entrepreneurial world that rings incredibly true. If you advertise to everybody, you'll get nobody. Or if you try to be all things to everyone, you'll be nothing to no one. This refers to the business suicide that results from having to wide of reach in your business. Let's look at this in more detail. If you don't have a niche, you're busy doing basic work or selling general products for all groups of people. You won't have time to become an expert in anyone field and will lack specialization, which devalues your service or product and prevents you from charging a higher price. And then you're simply in direct competition with others in your market, and it becomes a price war, reducing your income. However focusing on a niche market. About 80% of your market competitors may not have your specific offers you're completely unique and no longer compete in the same way your competitors don't compare to your services, and you no longer compete in price wars. But set your own price. You've innovated and created a new category, offering higher value that wasn't previously available to the market, which it allows you to charge a higher price. And your customers will pay it because they'll see the value specific to their niche. Let's look at an example within the service industry. First, let's consider the general accountant who is provider focus and will take any client thinking it. They do not specialize in any particular niche. Basic. ABC Accounting is among the largest locally owned accounting firms in Northern California. We've been serving the community since 1998 in the areas of technology, construction, manufacturing, logging, fishing, food and government with three office locations, we've become one of the trusted pillars of our community. Whether you're looking for a new firm or just curious as to what we can offer would welcome the opportunity to meet with you. Now let's look at a niche accountant who his client focus that specializes in a particular niche orthodontic of financial isn't simply, a group of accountants were financial experts for orthodontists Way help our clients organize their practice tax and accounting functions to make the most profit possible or orthodontic profit experts. While most accounting firms do tax preparation and accounting, that's just where we begin. We also focus on orthodontic practice valuations, practice acquisitions, sales, data analysis and consulting, vendor management, debt negotiations, tax planning and projections, retirement planning, creating a private insurance plan, payroll and so much more, all designed specifically for orthodontists. The one with the specialization within the orthodontic industry has more to offer orthodontist. While the general accountants will be doing basic services from all and any industry they could get, they won't be specialized in any one industry, so they won't know the best tax deductions, profit planning or the specific problems facing their clients. Industries. They'll know Onley, a few general fax that cover all clients. When something works well for one client in one industry, the knowledge won't necessarily transfer over to their other clients who are in a different industry. They simply won't know how to help their clients. Beyond the basic number crunching, however, the specialized accountants spend their time and focus on knowing orthodontist, their pains and struggles, their worries and their needs. They will have several clients, all in the same industry, so they will see how things work best for various clients, and we'll know how to share those strategies among their other clients. After all, they're all in the same industry. Similar tax deductions, similar profit planning and similar problems. The accountants will be able to go far more death with their clients because they simply have one niche on which to focus. Now let's look at an example in the manufacturing industry. This is Bill Bill owns General ABC clothing and uses a drop shipping technique to send his advertised clothing products directly from the manufacturer to the customer. Bill does not specialize toward any group of people, but simply cells all varieties of clothing articles to any customers willing to buy. Because there is no niche market for Bill, he is not able to market directly to a specific group, but tries to market to anyone and everyone wherever he may find them. And because there are so many different people with different needs where he's advertising , he cannot figure out exactly how to advertise and maximize his sales bill is stress. Now he is beginning to learn that if he advertises to everybody, he'll get nobody. Bill has decided to focus on one group of people. Bill loves to ski in the mountains and nose was snow. Skiers need so bill, Narrow says market and products to fit the needs of skiers. Bill tries to locate every website and magazine that skiers tend to view so he can advertise to the correct market. He doesn't waste his time with any other website or magazine. He also focuses on clothing articles, specific toe, winter sports scheme. He even includes items that normally wouldn't be considered clothing. But they are very useful within the scheme community goodbye to summer clothing, beach attire and any other clothing. Outside of his niche market, Bill advertises to snow skiers. He uses his time and efforts to understand their needs and their desires. He shows them that his online store is specifically made for them. Bill discovers that sales are moving more quickly and his income is beginning to increase. Bill is no longer stressed, but an expert and selling to the skiing community. So now we see the importance of finding our niche. But how do we pick a niche market for our business? That's where the entrepreneurs mirror comes into play this work, she has a series of questions for you to answer. Thes answers will help you see your reflection in the mirror and help you uncover the best niche for you. You're welcome to share your answers, or you can keep them to yourself if you prefer. But please take a moment and answer these questions. This will be a crucial step in finding your niche market and will also help you to be prepared for step number two. How to find what the market needs and I'll see you in the next lesson. 3. STEP 2: How to Find What the Market Needs: Now that you've completed, you should have a better understanding of who you are, your passions, your skills and the types of contacts you have around you. All of these things play into selecting your specific niche and what you're going to sell them. But let's go a little deeper. Consider this diagram. We're going to look at three main areas within each circle and then zoom into the middle of all three and discover what we're going to do, how we're going to do it and which market needs it. You can draw your own diagram on a piece of paper and follow along first in one circle. Using your work, she answers from the entrepreneurs Mirror right down your desires, Joyce. Passions, hobbies and generally, anything you like to do. Once that's completed, use another circle to write down your skills, experiences, career past or present degrees, licenses and anything you feel knowledgeable about. Once completed, used the third circle to write down what the market needs in general. We'll talk about how to find this in just a moment. Once you've written down all of your answers, take a look and see which ones merged toward the middle of your diagram. Are there any areas where your desires and passions merged with your skills and experience , along with what the market needs? If so, then you're beginning to see where your niche market lies and the services or products you're going to provide. If not, you may need to narrow your search for the market needs. Let's take a look at what this means In order to find what the market needs. You can visit Google trends and find what people are searching online. This will give you insight on what people feel they need. You can choose the region. You want to research the timeline you want to view topic or industry you're interested in and the type of search avenue used by the market. You may also type in specific words in the search term bar. After selecting what you want to review, you will have the ability to see the interest in the topic over time. Which regions are showing the most interest and any related topics for which your market is also searching. If you need help understanding the graphs and information, the little question mark buttons are available to clarify the reports But here's a quick rundown interest over time is not an exact number of people who have searched her term but shows 100 as the peak popularity for the term and the value of 50 shows that the term is half as popular. So make sure you're reading the popularity for the term in this way, when looking at the region's, these values should be interpreted the same way. You should remember that the values are a proportion of all queries, not absolute query counts. So a state or country with a tiny population may have a higher query score compared to a very populated state or country With a smaller score, However, you'll have to consider the population of the region before making any decisions based on the information provided. For example, California, the most populated state, may show a value of nine for searches on skis, while Wyoming, the least populated state, may show a value of 69 for searches on skis. However, since the population of Wyoming is so small, you may still have a larger market for skis in California. Next, the related topics simply show what your market who has searched your term is also looking for online. This may help you see correlations and additional needs for your specific market group. If you see the word break out next to a topic, this means that it is currently receiving a tremendous increase in searches. This could be a temporary fly by night increase or the early stages of a new trend. So be careful when considering breakout topics. Now, one of the problems with Google trends is that it shows you relative values instead of absolute search volume. So if you're trying to figure out what your market is looking for and see high values in certain regions, it's possible that only a small number of people have searched your term. And that's where you're seeing the Value 100 or the peak searches. So Google trends may help to see seasonal trends, rising trends and location of those trends. But in order to see actual search volume, you'll want to browse another site with absolute search volume. There are several out there, and some even have free trials. You can do searches of your own and see what keyword marketing platforms come up for you. As there may be some more suitable for your goals. Once you have a good idea of what the market needs, you can then use your diagram to decide what services or products you're going to offer your clients. And then you can move on to the next step of how to think in a new way that will allow you to recognize problems and overcome them more easily. 4. STEP 3: A New Way of Thinking: this step is one of the most important steps to learn and will be a foundational cornerstone on which the following steps are built. This step will help any entrepreneur established the essential new way of thinking to help build and improve their business and their messaging on. The best way to recall the strategy to mind is to remember the simplest of equations. A plus B equals C. Recall to mind that it's step to you discovered what your niche market needs. Those results will be part a of the equation. A plus B equals C, where a equals your niche markets needs or their problems. B equals the service or product you're going toe. Offer your niche market in order to resolve their problems, or the catalyst to bring you to see which equals the desired outcome or desired state that your niche market wants to see. So when thinking about this equation first you'll need to know what A and C are. Before you could figure out what B is, you want to know what your market or clients problems are and what their desired state is that they want to be in before you can figure out the catalyst or solution to get them from their problems to the desired state. This way of thinking can be used in one's personal life and in the business. Let's walk through a few examples. Bills back. Bill loves the out at Nice restaurants and enjoys playing online games with his buddies. He enjoys an occasional walk around the neighborhood from time to time, but it's always just the spur of the moment when he walks. Bill has noticed that he's been gaining some extra weight lately, and he'd like to figure out how to be healthier and trim again. He wants to lose about £25 all. So when looking at the equation, we see that a bill's perceived problem is that he's overweight. He doesn't have any dietary plan in place, no food journal, and he's not tracking any kind of daily progress when he exercises. Next, we see that see bills Desired State is that he wants to lose £25 have a healthier diet. So now that we know and see if we can figure out be the catalyst to get Bill from A to C with our help way, have guided built to several options, Bill has decided to hire a personal trainer to cook healthy food from home instead of eating out, to begin tracking his movements throughout the day to track his improvements, using measurements to research programmes and diets, and to try them until he finds a new lifestyle that fits him. By implementing the catalyst part B of the equation, Bill has gone from being overweight to trim and healthy again. Bill is satisfied with the results and recommends our services to all of his friends. Now let's look at a more in depth business example. Bill has decided to start up another drop shipping business where he sells fitness. Attired to his niche, he has noticed that a lot of his advertised summer fitness clothes have not been selling too well. Even when prices are lowered, Bill decides to investigate. Through his websites trend analysis, he has noticed that the majority of his clients are from Russia, where winters are long and very cold, while summers are short and mild. He's also noticed that the reviews for his business have been complaining about poor quality in the clothing where they tend to rip not long after being purchased, Bill decides to use his hand equation. A plus B equals C. He sees that a his clients perceived problems is that they don't have a lot of need for summer clothing where they live, and they feel that the clothing they Dubai isn't the best quality bill, then figures that see what his clients desire is for more warm winter fitness attire and better quality in the material that will last longer. So now Bill needs to figure out his catalyst to bring his customers from their perceived problems to their desired state. Bill goes to the manufacturing websites. He orders his products from and begins to better observe the ratings of the clothing order . He only advertises on his website the products that have five star ratings for quality assurance. Next, he brings his attention to an increased number of winter fitness clothing. If he advertises yoga pants, then they will have a warm interior lining made for winter. If he advertises fitness sports gear, they will line up more heavily with the sports played in the winter. This doesn't mean that Bill will get rid of all the other styles of fitness attire, he will simply tweak his focus and advertising to better suit the majority of his clients. Bill appears to have a good understanding of the new way of thinking. A plus B equals C. Finally, let's take a look at a more in depth service business example. Bill has automated the majority of his drop shipping business and now has time to provide accounting services for small business owners. Bill has a client who owns a construction company with 15% profit margins. His client feels that his profit margins should be 25 to 30% an increase of $200,000 per year or more. The client wants to receive timely financial statements so he can see profitability per construction project. Then he'd be able to make a proper plan each month to better direct his business. So now Bill gets to thinking on his equation. Bill sees that a his clients perceived problem is that he has no method for seen profitability by project, he typically receives his monthly accounting reports 3 to 4 weeks after month end, which is too late to make good decisions within his company. Bill sees that see his clients desired state is to receive timely financial statements within five days of month end, which allows his client to see profitability per project. Then his client could make a proper plan each month with vendors, sub contractors and customers to increase fees, lower expenses and increased margins. So now Bill considers be the catalyst that will help build. Client Bill creates a monthly process for his client to track Cosper Construction Project Bill prepares financial statements each month within five days of month. In calls his client to review the results of every month and designs an action plan with his client. Based on the data observed Bills Client is ecstatic and tells all of his network about bills. Incredible Services. Bill sees an increase in his revenue as more and more clients come his way. Now, after reviewing the examples for using the equation, make sure you begin to default to this new way of thinking for your business on a regular basis. There is a worksheet available to you to help integrate this new way of thinking into your business. One thing I'd like to point out with this new way of thinking using this equation, notice that it doesn't focus on your business but instead focuses on your client's. That's the beauty of this new way of thinking. By focusing on your client's needs and how to resolve those needs, it will have a positive domino effect and help your business grow and improve. Those who focused merely on their business will miss the mark, and their businesses won't succeed. Therefore, it's crucial to implement this new way of thinking into your daily mindset when building up your business. Continue to ponder how to use this equation in your business as we go on to the next steps as they're going to build upon this strategy and I'll see you in the next lesson. 5. STEP 4: Your Message, Market, & Offer: in this step, we're going to look at your market offer and message. First, your market refers to your niche market way figured out who your niche market is and their needs in the previous steps. So if you don't know who this is, you might consider going back and watching steps one through three. Again. It's essential to know who your market is because without knowing who you're serving, it's impossible to know what they need and what services you offer. Second, your offer refers to the services or products are going to provide. If you're still unsure about what to offer, here are a handful of ways to get information on your market. Google searches linked in searches, Reading blocks directed toward your market. Reading trade magazines, attending industry conferences, learning industry software. Listening to podcast Watching YouTube channel specific to your market, using educational platform that some of the best ones interviewing people within your market client interactions, actually asking your clients client transactions, monitoring the data, calling competitors and looking at competitor websites. As you gather this information on your market continuously, think about how you can help your market with their needs. Third, once you know your market and their perceived problems or their needs, and you know the service you're going to provide to help resolve those problems. Your message is the way you communicate your offer to your market in written and verbal form. Your messaging should draw out your market's needs the benefits of your offer and make your mark. It feel as though the messages specifically for them remember your niche market has problems or needs that need to be fixed. We're showing them how we can fix their problems and showing them that we specialize and are speaking directly to them. Our goal is to help our specific market, not the entire world. Remember trying to help everyone? You won't help anyone. But when trying to focus on helping your market, you'll be extremely successful, and your market will be very grateful. Let's use this helpful worksheet to get the ball rolling. Don't worry about perfecting your message just yet, as we will expand on it and improve it in Step six. But for now, let's take a look at the worksheet. I highly recommend referencing your worksheet from Step three, a new way of thinking to help build your initial general message to your market. Take a moment and think about what niche market you want to serve. What group do you want to help in what problems or needs? Do they have? Remember, this is part A from the new way of thinking. What does this group need to solve their problems? Do they need services or products? Is it for their business or personal use? These questions referred to part B of the equation. Finally, how do you communicate the solutions you have for them? And what will their transformation from a to C look like by accepting your help? Your message should have a combination of A B and C from your equation. State in the message A. Who you are helping see the desired state you're bringing them to and be the process or services you'll provide in order to get them there, then state in your message why they can't do it without your help. For now, don't be afraid to keep it simple. If you're not sure how toward the message at this point, we just want to make sure that you get the structure of the message down. We will work on evolving your message in step six to make it a message your market can't ignore. As for now, let's move on to step five and see how you can actually reach your market effectively. 6. STEP 5: Reaching Your Market: in this lesson, we're going to discover five incredibly effective strategies to reach your market. There are a plethora of ways to get creative and reach your market, and even within the five strategies will be looking at. There is so much information that to teach it all would require entirely separate courses for each one. We'll go over them briefly here first. Organic outreach This is probably the simplest way to reach a piece of your market, especially if you're just starting up your business from scratch. Organic outreach Your first to making a list of all of the people in your life or in your network who may be in your niche market and reach out to them. You can reach out to them to see if they're interested in your products or services, or you may simply reach out to interview them in order to better get to know your niche market. Second, direct email outreach can be another effective strategy to reach your market. With this strategy, you find people or businesses within your market, usually by searching online. You search for their websites, blog's or groups that they've joined pertaining to your market. If your services or products tend to market to individuals like people who love to hike outdoors. Then you can search online for common groups with those people. If your services or products tend to market to businesses, you can search online for the groups or networks they join within their respective industries. The third effective strategy used to reach your market is using three D mail. This is where you actually Maley gift prospects within your market, along with a small advertisement for your services. It can be small and inexpensive, or even something you get for free. Three D mail is an effective strategy because it gives something to your prospect, which causes them to notice and remember your advertisement. If done correctly, it shows that you put time and effort into the gift and want an actual business relationship with your clients. This strategy may depend on the type of services or products you're offering, but it's definitely a good one to consider if it fits for your business. Fourth, Lincoln outreach is a very effective strategy for funding and getting new clients for this outreach. Lincoln is used to build your network within the platform and connect to people within your market, just like the direct email outreach. This strategy will require its own course, as there is so much information to share on this and in the fifth strategy will talk about advertising on social media. Facebook advertising is a great way to use pool advertising instead of push advertising. All of the previous ways mentioned to reach your market involve a heavy amount of push advertising, meaning that you push your message to people so that they will see it. Facebook advertising allows you to create ads within Facebook, which pull the attention of the readers to your message. Instagram advertising can be incredibly effective as well, especially for drop shipping. Instagram allows you to upload photos of your products or services and reach out to your specific niche as you increase your followers on INSTAGRAM. Visitors to your page will have an opportunity to click a link to your website, or you can have options to click photos that will take them directly to the product you are advertising. This is a great way to drive traffic to your business's website and is used by many entrepreneurs. Already, advertising on YouTube is another way to drive traffic to your website products or services . There are multiple types of advertisements within YouTube. Some are effective in some are, well, garbage. So you want to be careful of which type of advertising you select. If you go with YouTube, would you like to know which adds air useful and which are not? So now lets you in on a little secret. This was not intentional, but while creating this lesson, I found that it was way too long to go over all of the areas in detail, showing you how to utilize these strategies with more precision. So I ended up making a completely separate course that goes way more in depth with East five strategies. So if you're interested in learning more in depth of how to reach your prospects effectively, or you want to know which ads are useless in YouTube and which are effective, then I recommend you check out my other course small business prospecting five strategies for reaching your market. That course gives more detail on how to apply these strategies, whereas this lesson simply mentions them in brief. If you're not interested in this lessons topic and you simply want to move on to the next lesson, then stay tuned as next will be discussing how to improve your message in Step six evolution of your message. 7. STEP 6: Evolution of Your Message: this'll be one of the most important things you can learn in a business. How to evolve your message in such a way that your market will see that you understand them and that you can truly offer high value to them. Once you are able to communicate this to your market effectively, you've just blown all other competitors out of the water. You single yourself out to your specific niche and have shown them that they'll get better value from you than any other competitors. Let's dive into this further in step for you should have already created a general message to your market using the new way of thinking A plus B equals C. We learned this in Step three. Your market has a problem. A. That you figured out how to resolve be to bring them to their desired state. See way. Want to take a general message that you wrote and form it into a niche focused message and then improve it all the way to a niche focus plus high value offer message. For example, a general message for an accountant may look like this. We help small business owners minimize taxes and maximize profit by itself. This message does not stand out to any specific type of business, nor will anyone think it adds value to their business as it appears to be basic and in direct competition with any other tax planner or accountant. At this point, the people who do read our message will begin comparing prices with our competitors. We won't get as many clients, and we'll have to bring our price down below the actual value of our services. So let's improve this message to be a niche focused message way. Help construction companies reduce their tax liability by 20 to $30,000 maximize profits through having a better understanding of job costing. So this is better than the general message, but still not great. We've added that niche market that we specialize in construction companies. We gave a general amount of tax savings, or clients will see the general numbers often lose prospects compared to non general numbers. And we've used some terminology that our niche market would use, such as job costing, which helps speak to our market better and shows them that we understand them. One of the best things you can do when creating your message is to use your markets words, not your own. By using their words and their terminology, they will relate better to you and see that you truly understand their markets needs. Whenever you speak to a client or interview prospects in your market listen to what they're saying. If they're saying that they don't know how to increase their commercial job profits, then use their words when advertising your message to that market. So now let's improve upon our niche focused message and turned it into a niche focused and high value offer message, using words that are market has used when speaking to us, where H back profit experts trained to maximise commercial and residential job profits, minimize vendor fees and reduce your company's tax liability by at least $27,843. Our clients start seeing results within 60 days. Do you see how this message stands out from the general message? We help small business owners minimize taxes and maximize profit in the niche focused plus high value offer message. We used our markets words such as H Vac, which is specific to construction companies, and commercial and residential job profits which are market has spoken to us about being a problem for them. Way also refer to ourselves as profit experts instead of simply accountants. We've separated ourselves from competitors by showing our market that we understand them and their needs, and we show them that we're not merely being counters. So now we can grab the attention of our market better and show her market the value we have for them. We no longer compete with price wars among our competitors because we've created a new offer to our market that our competitors just can't do. If they are providing accounting services for everyone, we'll never know the details of the problems within our market. They'll provide basic services while we know every corner in every pain that our market has , and we know how to get them to where they want to be. So we've just increased the value of our company and our market will see that another strategy that we placed in the niche focus plus high value offer is that we didn't generalize savings. We provide our clients. We used an exact number, not an even number 27,843. We got this number from tracking the savings we provided for our clients, and we either average the number or we take the lowest savings we've found for one of our clients. Since we use the words at least in the message, then we probably use the client with whom we were able to say the least amount of money. It's always good to use an odd number instead of a round number like 27,843 compared to $30,000 for some reason. Market psychology has proven that people don't believe even round numbers as well as they believe odd, unique numbers. When you tell your market that you can save them $27,843 they begin to ask themselves why that exact amount? There must be something to it for them to advertise that exact amount in savings. And of course, we know that there is. It's based on factual data that we pulled from our clients, or, if you don't have clients yet pull the number from actual data and estimates you found during your research. So obviously this niche focus plus high value offer message is one in a sea of many options , I couldn't begin to show you every niche message possible, as it would take an eternity to do so. And what's more is that I don't know your market as well as you do. If you are marketing to middle aged women who wear makeup, I'll tell you right now that I don't know anything about that market or product you do. That's why you're wanting to help that market. But I have given you the foundation of how to market to your specific niche. You have the tools now make them your own. Some key points to think about as you organize and improve your message is your message showing your market what you're offering the process to get there, how much they'll save or enjoy the service product experience, etcetera. How about a timeline? Does your message show a timeline? If so, this is great prospects like to see that they'll receive their desired outcome Part C. Within a short, reasonable period of time. It brings the gold to a reality when you show them the timeline within the message. Now that you have the tools to create a message that your market can't refuse. I encourage you to utilize the provided work she to help you improve your message until you have the best niche focused plus high value offer message you can create. And this shouldn't be the last time you improve your message. As you grow and become more skilled in helping your market, you want to revisit your message and help it evolve and change. As your market evolves and changes as you do, you may find yourself getting more clients and higher financial freedom over time. 8. STEP 7: How to Jump the Inevitable Hurdles: If you've already put your new business into motion, I'm sure you've quickly found out that there are a number of inevitable hurdles along the way. One of the main differences you'll have starting up your own business compared to working in the corporate world for someone else is that when problems arise, you're kind of on your own to fix them. In the corporate world, whenever something doesn't make sense or you struggle with a new application on your computer, you always have someone to go to who can walk you through it. When you have I t problems. You usually have an I T department who you can call upon, and they fix it, not the case for entrepreneurs. Unless you have an excellent and expansive network within the entrepreneurial world, you'll have to figure out how to learn applications, task legal items and fix I t. Problems all on your own. This can feel overwhelming at times, and you may even become tempted to give up. However, there are at least a few great tools that will help you jump over the hurdles that will most certainly come your way way first, probably the main one. Everyone thinks of these days just to check online. Google is a great tool to use for basic information and some troubleshooting. It may require some reading or watching videos uploaded to help entrepreneurs, but it can be incredibly useful. But depending on what the problem is, it may also be very time consuming at times a second and one of my favorites is finding an online network of entrepreneurs who are in your similar filled. There are platforms available where business owners communicate to each other on a regular basis. If someone is facing a problem within their business or simply needs ideas and encouragement, they can bring it up in their network and someone else who has already gone around. That same hurdle will be more than happy to help share how they resolve the problem. I really can't stress it enough to find a good network of like minded entrepreneurs specifically in your field of business. I belong to a few myself, and some of the biggest help I've received is from within my network. And what's even better is that you usually get several quality answers within 24 hours or less without having to exhaust copious amounts of time, researching it all yourself and still wondering if you've even got the right information. Third, make sure you prioritize your hurdles and then use the same equation that we learned in Step three. A new way of thinking to figure out how to resolve these hurdles since you'll be using this mindset for your clients is just as it's helpful to use it for your own business and even your own personal life. When considering how to prioritize your problems, you'll want to ask yourself three things. How easy is this? The fix? How easy is it to maintain once it's fixed? How likely is it to increase my business? This work she is provided for you make sure to list your biggest problems and daily frustrations to the left, then begin to rate 1 to 10. Each question asked, How easy is this to fix 10 Being the easiest? How easy is this to maintain? Once it's fixed? 10. Being the easiest. How likely is it to increase my business? 10. Being the most likely to increase your business profits, clients and so on. Then add up the total to the right and the highest numbers should be prioritised first, because these are the ones that you should be able to resolve the quickest, the easiest maintained without issues and will profit your business the most. If the total number is very low, then these are the ones that shouldn't have lower priority, as they will be the most difficult, most time consuming and least beneficial to your business. Then, once you've prioritized your problems, begin to utilize the equation. A plus B equals C to find the catalyst that will bring you from a your problem to see your desired state. For example, let's say that you're in sales and you're having trouble finding new prospects. Remember, you have to find A and C before you confined. Be so you need to know the problem and the desired state you want to be in before you can find the catalyst to resolve the problem. So in a let's type about, I'm having trouble finding new prospects and in cr desired state, let's say we want to get five new appointments each week to speak with prospects over the phone. So then we decide, be the catalyst to get us to our desired state in this case we wrote. I need to narrow my niche and be more specific with my market. Then I need to improve my messaging to get my niches attention. Once I figure out who I'm reaching out to and what I'm going to say in my message, then I need to test with different lead generation methods. I'll try direct outreach and Lincoln outreach for the next few weeks and see if anything improves. You're welcome to look at the other examples in this worksheet, but in the meantime, I encourage you to utilize it for your own business. Thes three tools will be incredibly useful to you as a new or evolving entrepreneur. They will help make jumping those inevitable hurdles much, much easier now that we know how to better jump those hurdles. Let's take a look at some basic housekeeping for your business. In the next lesson, legalities 9. STEP 8: Legalities: some of these things may differ slightly for each of you, depending on your specific business. For example, if you're starting up a dental practice, you'll need the proper medical licenses involved. For that, an accountant who does tax resolution in the United States will be required by law to have a C P A license, whereas not all accountants need to B C V Eights. So there may be details pretending to your specific field that won't be mentioned here. Additionally, this information may change over time, so I can't make any guarantees that it will be the same tomorrow. And as it was when this course was created, I recommend checking the appropriate websites to verify details for your state or location and for your particular business. But nevertheless, the following information will be very useful for you to know first when establishing your business. It is always recommended to consider contacting your attorney for any legal considerations . For most people, establishing their business as an LLC taxes an escort will make the most sense once they begin making 40,000 to $50,000 per year in sales. This is because there are certain tax savings available for escorts that don't exist for sole proprietors, specifically, if you make enough to take profit draws, however, in some cases, a partnership could also make sense as you grow and bring on other partners, depending on which that you live in. If that particular state has an additional S Corp tax, so you want to verify this for your state before you make 40,000 to $50,000 per year with your business. Many people run their business as a Schedule C so proprietor, especially if they are not filing taxes due to their income being below the threshold to file. However, if you are filing taxes, you should incorporate immediately, and you should consider having liability insurance before filing your first return. Common types of insurance are general practice, liability insurance and cyber insurance. If your business is an online service where you receive payments and customer information through your computer, make sure to contact your attorney at an insurance representative to discuss your options. So are you feeling a bit overwhelmed with this information? Don't worry. There are a lot of reasonably priced third party businesses that will do pretty much everything for you, depending on your needs. One particular business that I like is ink file. I don't represent them, and they're not paying me anything to recommend them. But they do offer a much easier process for small business owners to get things moving quickly and accurately. For example, as of the date this course was made, they verify your company's name availability. They prepare and file your articles of incorporation for you. They provide a registered agent for your business, free business tax consultation, online access to your incorporation documents and so much more that allows you to focus more on building your business with your specialties than trying to focus on all the legalities yourself. There are several other third party businesses that provide these types of services, so make sure to do a little research and find the one that best suits your needs. Finally, after you receive your articles of incorporation and business license, it's a good idea to take them to your bank and open up business accounts separate from your personal accounts. You don't have to do this for a sole proprietorship, but it does make things a lot cleaner and organize for you going forward if you would like more information on how to set up your bank accounts for the most optimal strategies for small business owners. Or, if you would like to learn how to optimize your cash flow within your business, check out my course 10 steps to optimize your cash flow management. There, I show you strategies such as how to optimize your bank accounts, setting up saving goals, how to use cash flow engineering and cash flow forecasting for your business. A. Several other tips related to improving your cash flow, whether a new business owner or season, it will help you improve your business and shave off years of struggle so that you can achieve your financial freedom much, much sooner, and I look forward to seeing you there. 10. Wrap Up: congratulations on completing the course. You now know what steps to take to start up your very own business. You know how to choose the type of business you want, how to find what the market needs, how to think in a new way that will allow you to recognize problems and overcome them more easily. You've learned how to design your message, market and offer and how to get information on your message market and offer how to reach your market using multiple strategies. How to evolve your messaging over time, how to get around inevitable hurdles for your business. And you've learned the illegalities and starting up your business. If you haven't already, make sure you go back and complete the worksheets throughout the course. As always, I encourage you to post your worksheets to the Project Gallery and give helpful feedback and encouragement to others who have posted their projects there as well. Thank you so much for joining my course. If you liked it, please give a happy review and feel free to comment on how it helped you also let me know what other courses you'd like me to present more interest in a particular topic, the more likely that topic will be coming soon. Thanks again, and I'll see you in the next course.